Canvas Conferencing for Moderators

Transcription

1 Canvas Conferencing for Moderators Table of Contents Minimum Requirements for Conferencing for Conferencing Moderators... 1 Troubleshooting Audio problems... 2 Unable to hear audio in the session... 2 Unable to transmit audio... 4 If there is a lot of background noise in the session... 9 Audio for speaker is crackling, has gaps, or cuts out The speaker is hard to hear Troubleshooting Usage Problems Presenter is unable to share their desktop Desktop sharing is slow If you are repeatedly disconnected Fonts are not displaying correctly in the document Trouble uploading a document Unable to share your webcam You are not able to view recordings

2 Minimum Requirements for Conferencing for Conferencing Moderators A laptop or desktop computer with (at least) 2G of memory and a 1Ghz processor. A web browser running Flash 11.2 (or above). Any web browser capable of viewing YouTube should be able to run Conferencing (BigBlueButton). The recommended browsers are Google Chrome (as Chrome has Flash built-in and is always up-to-date) and Mozilla FireFox. An internet connection must be at least least 500 Kbits/second upstream bandwidth and 1Mbits/second downstream bandwidth. (If you suspect a bandwidth issue, test your bandwidth speed at If teachers intend to do desktop sharing, they must have the latest Java plugin installed (Java SE 7). They can test with If teachers intend to do desktop sharing (which is the most bandwidth intensive part of BigBlueButton), the minimum recommended upstream bandwidth is 1 Mbits. Teachers and Students are strongly recommended to use a headset. A headset will ensure you can participate with minimum audio problems, have your voice heard clearly, and not inject ambient noise into the session if you are in a noisy environment. A laptop with a built-in webcam and microphone is sufficient, but must be used in a quiet area. Two key points if you do not use a headset: 1. If two users are sitting next to each other and connect to the same session without headphones it can cause an echo. 2. You will get feedback when doing the built-in audio test. Where possible, it is recommended that you connect through a wired network; connecting from a wireless network may cause periodic wireless disconnects. Note: Conferencing (BigBlueButton) will disconnect you anytime it detects the network connection has dropped. The image below shows the confirmation you have been disconnected from the conference

3 Troubleshooting Audio problems Unable to hear audio in the session 1. Did you initially hear audio? Sometimes Conferencing (BigBlueButton) will disconnect a user s audio. If this occurs, click the headset icon to log back into the audio bridge. 2. Can you hear audio outside of Conferencing (BigBlueButton)? Can you hear audio when playing a YouTube video or a music/sound file? Every operating system (Mac, Unix, and PC) has a default audio playback device. Flash uses the default audio playback device for sound. The most common problem is that the user s default audio playback device is set to mute. In Windows, this is visible in the lower right-hand corner

4 To unmute the speakers, click on the speaker icon. Select your sound level with the vertical audio slider that appears, by moving the slider up or down to increase or decrease the sound level. Click the speaker button to enable the speaker. If the volume control is not in the taskbar, you can access it through the Windows Control Panel under the tool Adjust System Volume

5 If your audio is interrupted, but your call is still connected you can click the headset icon to rejoin the audio. If you do not hear audio in Conferencing( BigBlueButton), check the default audio device. In windows, select Control Panel > Sound There should be a default playback device, it has a check mark as shown above. Do the other devices show activity? If so, make that device the default device (select it, then click Set Default). Return to the browser, refresh the window and try joining the audio conference again. The user should now hear sound. Unable to transmit audio 1. Do you have a microphone? You need to have a microphone, either built into your laptop, a webcam with a built in microphone, or a headset (headset is preferred). If Conferencing (BigBlueButton) fails to detect *any* microphone, it will still join you into the session, but your voice audio will not be heard. Furthermore, you will not be prompted for permission to access a microphone

6 2. Choose a different microphone If you are no longer in the Listeners window, click the headset twice. The first time is to leave and the second time is to rejoin so you can test your audio. You should see the Microphone or Listen Only Dialogue box (shown below). Click the Microphone button and choose a different microphone from the dropdown menu

7 3. Confirm that you can be heard To make sure your audio is working correctly, complete the audio test. Speak a few words and click the Yes button [1] if you hear audio. If you need help with your hardware, click the Question Mark button [2]. If your microphone is not highlighted, leave the audio conference (click the headset icon), then rejoin (click the headset icon again) and choose a different microphone

8 4. Check if Chrome is asking for access to microphone If you are using Chrome and cannot be heard after clicking Join Audio in the Audio Settings dialog box, there may be a popup window above the session requesting access to use the microphone. Click Allow. 5. Check that the operating system detects a working microphone Before you begin, make sure your headset or microphone is connected. In Windows, if your operating system does not detect a functioning microphone, right-click on the speaker icon in the system tray and choose recording devices

9 This will display the list of recording devices that Windows detects. Next to each valid recording device, there will be a series of stacked bars. Say a few words to test if Windows detects energy. You should see the green energy bars move as you are talking. If no energy bars display, then Windows is not getting any energy from the microphone, and thus neither will (Conferencing) BigBlueButton. This indicates that you do not have a working microphone, or that the drivers for your current built-in microphone are not working

10 You can also adjust your microphone by selecting the microphone; click Properties, then click the Levels tab. From here you can increase the sensitivity of the microphone to make it louder. If there is a lot of background noise in the session This occurs when someone has connected to the conference, but has not muted their microphone. The recommended approach to manage the audio in a class, once it has started, is to do the following: Note: These steps assume the teacher has logged in with an account that has moderator status. Clicking Mute All will mute all unlocked users and new users who join the audio conference. There are three ways to mute a user: 1. Have the student mute themselves Each user has a Mute/Unmute button. Clicking the button when it reads Mute will mute the user s microphone. When their microphone is muted, there is a red slash through the icon to the left of their name

11 2. Moderator can mute users The moderator can mute any user any time. This is done by clicking on their microphone icon to the right of their name. To quickly locate the student causing noise when there are many students in a room, look for those students that have an active speaker icon (it is always on or frequently flashing) to the right of their name. 3. Mute all users If the teacher is unable to determine which microphone is causing audio problems, the teacher can mute all users

12 Audio for speaker is crackling, has gaps, or cuts out If other listeners comment that the speaker s audio is poor, it is usually a result of poor network connections. 1. Have the speaker disconnect/reconnect Have the speaker click their headset icon twice; the first click will disconnect them, the second click will reconnect them to the audio bridge. 2. Reduce bandwidth usage Have the speaker turn off other applications (remote desktop, netflix, etc.) which may be consuming bandwidth. Have the speaker do a bandwidth usage check by going to wait a moment for the page to load, then click Begin Test. After a few moments, the test will give an accurate estimate of their upstream and downstream bandwidth. If the upload speed is less than 0.5 mbps (megabytes per second), the user s upload speed may be insufficient for BigBlueButton. The speaker is hard to hear The speaker can increase the sensitivity of their microphone. 1. Increase microphone sensitivity 1. Click the headset icon to leave the audio conference. 2. Click the headset icon again to join; this will show the audio settings dialog. 3. Click Test or Change Microphone button and in the Adobe Flash Player Settings dialog, have the user increase the Record Volume. 4. Click Close button

13 5. Click Join Audio button. The speaker s audio should now be louder in the voice conference. If it is unchanged, use the operating systems audio settings to increase the sensitivity of the microphone. In Windows: 1. Right-click on the speaker icon in the system tray and choose Recording Devices. 2. In the Sound dialog box under the Recording tab, choose the active microphone and click the Properties button. 3. Click the Levels tab, (1) in the diagram below. 4. Increase sensitivity of microphone, (2) in the diagram below. 5. Click OK button. Have them speak into the audio conference again and confirm if other users can hear them better

14 Troubleshooting Usage Problems Presenter is unable to share their desktop A presenter needs Java 7u51 (or later) installed to run BigBlueButton s desktop sharing applet. Only the presenters need Java installed (not the viewers). Problems desktop sharing are usually caused by one (or more) of the following configuration issues with: not having Java runtime installed not giving their browser permission to run Java not having Java 7u51 (or later) installed. To help the presenter resolve the above issues quickly, BigBlueButton now presents the following message and link at the bottom of the Presenter Preview dialog: The message now informs the presenter that desktop sharing Requires Java 7u51 (or later) to run. If the presenter is unsure of their version of Java, they can click the link Test Java to visit which is Oracle s test page for checking/upgrading Java. The following steps will help you diagnose and resolve these issues with desktop sharing. 1. Check if user is running Chrome on Mac OS X On Mac OS X, Chrome cannot run Java applets as Chrome is a 32bit application and Java is 64bit. If the presenter is running on Mac OS X and they need to share their desktop, recommend they use FireFox or Safari. Note: Viewers can use Chrome on Mac OS X to view the shared desktop

15 2. Make sure you are running Java 7u51 (or later) Click the Test Java link to test Java. This will take you to the Java test page at Oracle. If you are running FireFox, you must give FireFox permission to run a Java applet. FireFox will prompt you twice for permission (see next step). Click Run. If the presenter does not have Java installed, or has an older version installed that will not run, the Java test page will show a message prompting the user to update their Java, such as:

16 Update your version of Java. You should be able to share your desktop. If you are running Safari (Mac OS X), the first time you visit the Java test page you will be prompted to unblock Java

17 Having clicked Java blocked for this website, Safari will prompt them to trust Java. Once you click Trust, Safari will then detect if your version of Java is up-to-date. If your Java is out-of-date, Safari will prompt you to update. Update your Java to the latest version, quit Safari, then enter into Conferencing (BigBlueButton) again. After clicking Test Java in the desktop sharing panel, you should now be prompted to accept the Java Certificate for the Java Detection program

18 After clicking Run, the Java Detection applet will test that their version of Java is up-to-date (as did Safari). If the Java version is out-of-date (this is a second test), you will see a message to upgrade. Click the Download Java Now button. 3. Make sure you have given Java permission to run If you are using FireFox, as of October 18, 2013, Mozilla now requires the user to explicitly give permission to run any Java applet. FireFox will prompt the user twice. The first prompt will be in a popup banner bar. Here s how it appears in Windows: And here it is on Mac OS X:

19 Click Allow The second prompt will be to allow the applet to run. Here s how it looks on Mac OS X: Here s how it looks in Windows (it s the same UI): To run the desktop sharing applet, the user must: 1. Select choose Allow (or Allow and Remember) 2. Click OK With FireFox, if you click anywhere within the main window before making a choice, the above dialog will disappear, but Java will not run until you give it permission. You must click the block icon to the left of the address bar and give Java permission to run

20 Why all the steps? Due to recent security vulnerabilities in Java, Mozilla now disables Java by default in their browser. For more information, see Once you have clicked OK, the desktop sharing applet will run. You should be able to share your desktop. If you are using Safari (Mac OS X), you will get prompted to Trust Java for the site. Note: Even if you had previously clicked Trust, you may be asked again. Why? The reason is that your meetings may not always start on the same Conferencing (BigBlueButton) server. Blindside Networks uses a load balancer front-end BigBlueButton (this way meetings are started on the least loaded BigBlueButton servers in a pool). 4. Java version is out-of-date If you attempt to run an older version of Java (earlier than Java 7u51), your OS will warn you not to proceed without updating

21 If you attempt to proceed, the BigBlueButton applet will display an alert that you are required to run Java 7U51 (or later). If this occurs, you must upgrade your Java runtime. To do so, click the Test Java link And proceed through the steps to test and upgrade Java. After the upgrade is finished, you should be able to share your desktop. Note: Why does BigBlueButton desktop sharing applet now require Java 7u51 (or later)? Oracle changed how a Java applet can receive JavaScript events from a browser. To prevent the scenario where a presenter attempts to stop desktop sharing (from within BigBlueButton) but the applet did not receive the event, the applet now checks to ensure the user has Java 7u51 (or later). Desktop sharing is slow The speed of desktop sharing depends on three items: How large is the screen area. How complex is the screen update. How fast is the users upstream bandwidth. To increase the speed of desktop sharing, the presenter can do the following: 1. Reduce the size of the screen area being shared Have the presenter restart desktop sharing, but choose region instead of full-screen. This will reduce the amount of screen area to send

22 2. Reduce the complexity of the screen update If you have a 32bit background image and choose to show the desktop, then BigBlueButton will faithfully transmit your image to remote users. To reduce the complexity of the screen update, the following is recommended: Create a solid color for background images. Minimize scrolling. Don t share an area of the screen displaying video (the effort to keep the video updated will consume most of the CPU and bandwidth). 3. Increase the bandwidth available to desktop sharing If you are sharing your webcam while desktop sharing, turn off your webcam. Check your current bandwidth with The key value to check is your upstream bandwidth and make sure you have at least 500kbps upload stream and 1mbps download stream. If you are repeatedly disconnected If you are periodically disconnecting, it s usually caused by an unreliable internet connection. 1. Check your network connection If you are on wireless connection try a wired connection. 2. Are you connected by a Windows 7 computer There is a known issue with Microsoft s Toeredo protocol that will cause all Flash applications to periodically disconnect. The solution is to disable Toeredo on the user s computer. See \Here are the steps in Windows: 1. Click the Start Menu, click All Programs, click Accessories, right click Command Prompt and click Run as Administrator. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want and then click Continue. 2. At the command prompt, enter the following command: netsh interface teredo set state disabled 3. You may be behind a firewall and it is tunnelling through port 80 if you see the word Tunnelling in the lower righthand corner of BigBlueButton. If so, it means your client isn t able to connect directly to the Conferencing (BigBlueButton) server through port This usually occurs when you are behind a corporate firewall. The best solution is to join through a different network that doesn t require tunnelling through port

23 Fonts are not displaying correctly in the document If you encounter formatting issues when uploading documents. 1. Upload a PDF version of the document In almost all cases, the best solution is to upload a PDF. If you are using any recent version of Microsoft Office (2007 or greater), you have the ability to save their PowerPoint or Word document as a PDF file. Note: If you upload a new PDF version of a document to correct formatting issues, the filename must be changed so the PDF version becomes the new document. If the file names are identical, BigBlueButton will only recognize the original file. Trouble uploading a document Document specs for uploading: Limit 30 MB and 150 pages If either of these two limits are reached, the slides/document will not upload and process. Unable to share your webcam If you get the message, The webcam is in use by another application, make sure 1. You have given permission for browser to access webcam and microphone If you don t give permission in Chrome *before* sharing your webcam, you will get this message. If this doesn t resolve the issue, it s often fastest to reboot your computer, as it clears all access to the webcam. You are not able to view recordings The BigBlueButton recordings are viewable as video files, specifically Theora video files (file type: mp4). The recommended browsers are: Windows: FireFox and Chrome Mac OS X: Chrome FireFox does not play MP4 files on Mac OS X. 1. Are you using Mac OS X with FireFox? Due to patent restrictions, Mozilla FireFox does not play MP4 files on Mac OS X. Recommend using Google Chrome. 2. Do you have Real Networks player installed? If you re using FireFox, check if you have the Real Networks Downloader plugin installed. If so, remove the plugin and restart the browser